The Central Government has started working out the financing of the next phase of bringing water down from Rules Reservoir to the coast: Desglosado 3.

If you take a trip up the Río Guadalfeo where it runs up through the canyon, you can’t fail to notice the double pipeline being laid. This is Desglosado 9, which was the first phase.

This first phase or section was financed using mostly EU funding (Next Gen), which covers 80% of the total 60-million budget. The remaining 20% was picked up by the Junta de Andalucía and the Mancomunidad de la Costa Tropical.

However, because the successive Central Government administrations didn’t get their donkey moving (get their ass into gear) soon enough, they missed the chance of including Desglosado 3 within the Next Generation hand out.

Madrid had announced in 2021 that the EU were going to put 105-million euros into the project but as there was a stipulation that all the pipes should be in place by 2026, and although the first phase should meet the target, there was no way that the second phase could even get off the drawing board by then, so… no EU funds for Desglosado 3.

It appears that only now the Central Government is working on how it is going to finance this second phase without EU funds. Today, in fact, technicians from Acuaes (the water utility company carrying out the work) and the Ministerio de Transición Ecológica as well as the Junta de Andalucía, have got together.

In this meeting they are discussing how things are going with the first phase, and untangling the financing needed for the second phase. Madrid is not ruling out looking around for a different grant but it doesn’t want to be only left with that option.

The idea is that as soon as the first phase is complete, the machinery won’t stop and will start immediately on the second, which is getting the water to Molvízar, Itrabo and over the hill into Río Verde Valley for Almuñécar.

The irrigation associations in Río Verde are going to put money towards it, so the Central Government intends to put the money down themselves and then get it back through levies on the said associations at a later date. However, they want the Junta to also help put the money down now. This is another point to be discussed in today’s meeting

The politicians consider that 30 years is long enough for the farmers to repay the sum needed, although our green-fingered friends want it extended to 50 years.

Editorial comment: one is tempted to ask oneself why they are still flatulating about looking for funds when the dam was finished over 20 years ago. In those 20 years we have had rightwing and leftwing governments but neither ‘got its finger out.’ It is not as if they woke up one morning and noticed a brimming dam and thought, perhaps we should look into connecting it up, right?

(News: Velez de Benaudalla, Costa tropical, Granada, Andalucia)

Keywords: Rules Reservoir, Irrigation Associations, Central Government, Junta de Andalucia, Desglosado 9 & 3, Rio Verde, Almunecar, Molvizar, Itrabo

Reader’s comment: “After all security of supply was the principal aim of the project in the first place. There remains the not-so-small matter of coastal erosion to address now that the Rio Guadalfeo is reduced to a v small stream!!” – Fred Davies